The Westgard Rules

What's New: January 2017

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Here's what's happening on Westgard Web this month:

7 Tips for Better Sigma in '17


Want World Class Quality? You have to ask for it by name. We see more and more labs, hospitals, and health systems doing this - asking for performance data and Sigma-metrics from their prospective vendors. But it's not as easy as it seems. You need to specify the goals, the decision levels, the imprecision time frame, and more. If you want to get an honest picture of performance from your vendors, you need to be in control of the tender / bidding process.

Here's some gentle advice about adding Six Sigma to the tender process

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A Sigma-metric analysis of a Vitros 5600, an Hitachi 7170, and a Roche Cobas 8000.


What happens when a hospital has multiple analyzers, "closed systems", "open systems" and "mixed systems"? When we use different analyzers, reagents, and calibrators, can we assume the results will always be comparable? NO. No, we can not.

Can wet and dry chemistry provide comparable results within the same healthcare system?
 

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ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems

Dr. Paulo Pereira begins a series on ISO standards that apply to the medical laboratory. ISO standards dominate more and more of the globe, and laboratories even within the US need to take a closer look at what is required to implement them. ISO 9001 had a significant update in 2015 and Dr. Pereira examines what those changes are and what they mean for medical laboratories

Do you need to adopt "Risk-based thinking"? ISO says so
 

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Quality Healthcare Medical Service of Hong Kong achieves Sigma Verification

Quality Healthcare Medical Service (QHMS) becomes the first laboratory in Hong Kong to achieve Sigma Verification of Performance.



QHMS Sigma Verification of Performance
 

Pop Quiz: What's the Sigma on Hospital Harm in the US?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

The third year of Medicare penalties has been meted out. This year hospitals were penalized for avoidable complications such as various types of infections, blood clots, bed sores, falls, and new to the list this year, the prevalence of two types of bacteria resistant to drugs.

Do you want to guess the percentage of injuries that impacted patients in US healthcare?

• 15%
• 11.5%
• 1.15%
• 0.115%

The answer, after the jump...

Q & A: Establishing new control ranges for unassayed chem controls

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Another question coming in from one of our website members:

Could you give me some suggestions on establishing QC ranges for unassayed chem. Controls?

We currently use [Brand X] unassayed chem controls (much less in cost than assayed controls) for some of our chemistry analytes.

For these controls, we are provided a “target mean” and a range.

Occasionally, our established mean (i.e. n=30) for a new lot  is outside of the range provided for “target mean” provided by manufacturer.

Could you suggest guidelines for acceptance of lab established means for unassayed controls? 

Obviously, I would like to know how far from the “target mean” could the new lab established mean be?

The answer, following the jump...

Q & A: Is this a 4:1s violation?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

We got the following question emailed to the website recently:

Greetings, I was [wondering] if the following case represents [violation] of 4 1s rule?

Control (A) point 1= EXCEEDS 2 SD /-2 SD lines >> warning

Control (A) point 2= WITHIN 2 SD/-2 SD lines >> accepted

Control (A) point 3= EXCEEDS 2 SD /-2 SD lines >> warning

Control (A) point 4= WITHIN 2 SD/-2 SD lines >> rejection

all the point[s] on the same side of the mean.

What do you think? The answer, after the jump

Stats of 2016

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Just taking a breath and looking back at what we accomplished in 2016:

• verified or re-verified nearly 30 separate laboratories
• visited 17 countries
• gave lectures in more than 45 cities
• reached 17,000 connections on LinkedIn
• exceeded 25,000 members on our e-newsletter list
• surpassed 52,000 members on westgard.com
• websites had more than 550,000 unique visitors
•    with more than 860,000 visits
•    viewing  more than 3.6 million pages
•     and accessing more than a terabyte of information

Thanks to all who visited the website, took our courses, attended our workshops, purchased our products, sent us email, joined the Sigma VP program.

The Quality movement is still going strong. We hope 2017 will bring even more and better changes.